The European Heritage Project

Background: In the context of the European Cultural Heritage Year 2018, we set out to give students opportunities to appreciate our European Cultural Heritage in a fun and creative way, through reading, acting and playing music, using English language skills as a lingua franca. The project name was The European Heritage Project. Objective: The objective was to appreciate our cultural heritage, take responsibility for it and enhance common European values to become better European citizens . The project also aimed at promoting high-quality skills and competences: especially language skills, and ICT and music competences. Participants: 25 students between 9 and 16 years old have participated in each school. Activities: Each partner country collaboratively worked on and shared a literary work and collaboratively adapted the literature to play format. All partners worked online on a common play to learn how to act it out and put on stage it will using a monument as part of the stage background .There were 5 plays each taking part in a different country having different monuments as part of the stage. When students travelled to partner countries, they performed an act the play proposed by that country together with visiting students. The content of the play highlighted a European value: the rights of children, respect, peace, equality, etc. They performed live music for the play which they had worked on collaboratively before through online collaborative tools such as MuseScore, Google Docs, Google Sheets, YouTube and the project website. After and during each mobility, they shared their experiences with their fellow students through vlogs, newsletters, videos and students' assembly . The methodology used was cooperative learning and problem-based learning. There were tutorials created for each of the 5 scenes of the 5 plays. All plays were acted out except for the last one which was done online. The result has been 5 plays which represented in each country (except the last one) recorded on video and a webpage for each of the plays where activities, events, vlogs and tutorials were posted. The output and progress of the project has been published in the school magazine, school website and social networks. An international programs department was created and there was a project corner in each school where the project where information was displayed .Also dissemination was done to the general public when the play was performed in public places through posters, roll-out signs and leaftlets. Sustainability: Partner schools have the know-how to implement more challenging drama and music projects in their schools. Developing and strengthening language skills and ICT skills of pupils and also teachers as well as international cooperation and strengthening multiculturalism are the qualitative project outputs.Our partnership has offered us an opportunity to promote and explore music, drama, literature, traditions, creativity, and the use of language in a variety of European schools and cultures, thus enriching future lessons in each school. The project has also helped to enhance European values and the European dimension of each partner school. We believe that we have achieved the objectives of the project: both promoting high-quality skills and appreciating our common Heritage. In the long term, we have created an interest in all schools for international projects, a curiosity to discover the European Heritage , a motivation to continue learning languages and discovering European literature and above all, by making friends, students are more aware , more tolerant with and more interested in other European cultures. Teachers participating in the project have achieved synergies by exchanging good practices and learned from one another by contributing with their strengths: organisational skills (Spain), technological skills (Romania), creative solutions and knowledge of Twinspace (Turkey), drama and music knowledge (Poland) and general experience in international programs (Italy).